“I think you’d better come away,” Thilling shouted, and he was just about to comply when there was an unexpected commotion.
The mount that carried Thilling’s equipment, which she had dismissed as an old nag, uttered a noise between a grunt and a scream, lost all her pressure, and measured her length on the ground.
VII
That nightfall none of the party had much maw for food. Byra had carried out a cursory examination of the dead mount, and what her microscope revealed exactly matched the description Eupril had given of the way the poison affected cutinates and precipitators at the quarry. The certainty that at least some of it must be at work in their own bodies took away all appetite.
While Thilling occupied herself developing the day’s images, not calling on Awb for help, the rest of them lay up on the branches of the nearest healthy trees, as though being clear of the ground could offer them security in the dark, like their remotest ancestors. Of course, if any of the local animals had been as altered as that mutated winget … But the Freeze, the Thaw, and the greed of the half-starved folk who had exploded across the world during the Age of Multiplication had combined to exterminate almost all large predators, and turned avoidance of animal food among the folk themselves from a moral choice into a necessity. Even fish nowadays was in short supply, more valuable to nourish cities than their citizens.
Awb thought of having to ingest the flesh of the mount whose stench drifted up to him, and shuddered.
As though the trembling of the branch he clung to had been a signal, Byra said suddenly, “What I don’t understand is how there can be burns without fire.”
“I thought you Jingfired knew all about everything,” came the sour riposte from Phrallet.
“I never said I was Jingfired!” Byra snapped. “If I was, do you think I’d be here? They have too much sense!”
In the startled pause that followed, Awb found time to wonder why she had chosen this of all moments to disclaim the pose she had—according to Thilling—long adopted, and also whether Thilling herself…
But there was no time to ponder such matters. Perceptibly desperate to avoid moving the observatory to another site, Lesh was saying, “We’ve got to isolate this stuff! Once we know precisely what it is—”
“Isolate it?” countered Drotninch. “When it can kill any concentration-culture it comes up against? You heard what Eupril said, and the folk at the quarry have only been dealing with a trace of it, diluted over and over.”
“Well, there are filters, aren’t there?”
“Filters will trap everything above a certain size. In fact I’m beginning to wonder whether that may account for the dam being so hot.”
“Next you show us how to light a fire underwater,” muttered Phrallet.
“Any moment now,” Byra promised, “I’m going to—”
“Byra!” Drotninch said warningly. But it was too dark and their pressure was too low for combat-stink; the keener note of simple fear predominated, and was compelling them gradually towards cooperation, much as it must have bonded their ancestors into forming tribes and eventually communities.
Awb shuddered again, but this time with awe and not disgust. It was amazing to be participating in so ancient an experience. Of course, something similar happened now and then at sea, when a storm assailed the city, but then wind and spray carried off the pheromones, and the decision to work together was dictated by reason.
How much was left of the primitive in modern folk? He must ask Thilling. If she were truly one of the Jingfired, she would certainly be able to answer such a question.
But the argument was continuing. Sullenly, as though not convinced that the others wanted to hear, Byra was saying, “It was the heat of the water that made me start thinking along these lines. Now I’ve realized what the tissue-damage in that poor mount reminded me of. I’ve got a scar where some young fool shone a burning-glass on my mantle when I was a budling. Instead of just comforting me, my budder made me turn even that silly trick to account. She dissected out a tiny scrap of tissue and showed me the way the heat had ruptured the cells. I noticed just the same effect in the mount. Of course, the damage is deep inside, instead of just on the surface.”